(Poetry WebSalh0n)

September 4, 2015September 5, 2015

Poetry: The Math –Carolyn Zaikowski

The Math

Thank you for your language, Adele Thusnelda
Thank you for the pilgrimage you took
Into the dust to give me food
My body flapping like a flag
Life’s edges are predicted
There is length, there are species
It is clear that hearts have stems
A chorus of queens is interrupted by a peasant

While you hid your port-wine stain
Always turning to the left
I sat and pursed memory’s stench like a lip
I tried to name myself and failed

Thank you for your love, Adele Thusnelda
This was the math

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Carolyn Zaikowski is the author of the novel A Child Is Being Killed (Aqueous Books, 2013) and the forthcoming In a Dream, I Dance by Myself, and I Collapse (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016). Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in The Rumpus, Denver Quarterly, Entropy Magazine, Eleven Eleven Journal, Sententia, Nebula: A Journal of Multidisciplinary Scholarship, and elsewhere. Find her at http://www.liferoar.wordpress.com/